Saturday, July 30, 2011

Last weekend my someone and I went on a family trip up north, with his parents, brothers, and his brother's girlfriend. My someone's mom loves to organize these trips and since the beginning of our relationship I've been lucky to join them on the last three trips. This one was a special trip because it was an over-nighter :)
As always, we headed towards an unknown destination (my someone's mom loves to keep those a secret and have us guessing till the very last moment...). All we had was her instructions- to bring proper shoes for walking in water (?!?).
Our first stop was at Elyakim Forest, which is in the Carmel area in northern Israel. We entered the park for the traditional family breakfast picnic of my someone's mom homemade Jachnun. When everyone got out of the car and started organizing everything for our feast, I decided to pull out the camera and snap away. I wanted to do a full series of shots to later create a little stop motion video (soon to come...). After a hearty meal, with our stomachs full to the T, we got back in the cars and continued north.
After driving for about an hour more, we pulled onto a little gravel road that lead us to an opening on the Dan River, next to the village Sh'ar Yeshuv. That was our starting point for a short-long hike in the river's path. I think it was about 800 meters all together, but the path was rough, with sometimes fast-flowing water, that at some points reached up to our waists, with trees and branches blocking our way, and so it felt a lot longer :) I must admit that I had a breaking point somewhere along the way, when I just couldn't see myself going through a path that seemed impossible at the time, but with the patience and help of my someone I persevered and made it through (with a smile!). A few hours later we were back at the cars ready to move on.
We followed my someone's parents to Rosh Pina, where we pulled into our quaint boutique hotel. We were pleasently surprised to find a charming little hotel, with an inner courtyard, romantic rooms to nest in, and an orchard in the back. The owner, Shulamit, welcomed us at the door, showed us around, and offered us some coffee and homemade cookies. We were in heaven! And if that wasn't enough, the cherry on our fabulous cake was that we had the place all to ourselves, as there were no other guests staying there that weekend! We settled into our rooms, and then my someone & myself grabbed our cameras and started photographing the place.
We spent that afternoon just lazying around and playing games. I brought my favorite pass-time game, Yahtzee, and taught the rest of the bunch how to play. We played all afternoon, and then some more the next morning. I think I created a monster by teaching his dad how to play... The minute he understood the game he started beating us all (He even got THREE yahtzee's in one game!!)
When it was time to leave we were all a bit sad. We had such a great time together that it was almost painful having to go back to reality...
Here are some of the images we took